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pg
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i've been playing the chinese version for pc with some english translation hacks and i'm pretty impressed(for a rtk game anyways). the only other rtk's i've played were rtk 1 through 4 though, so i've missed the newer ones. this is the only rtk where i think i'll be able to conquer all of china without getting bored and probably want to do it again. the music is very good as are the graphics/animation and artwork.
below is the city improvement menu which is where you'll spend most of your time. each city has a different population, and different maxes for each category(1000 is the limit max for support, farm, market and defense though). your officers(which have pol, int, war, lead) need different skills to improve different things and you also need gold for each improvement. it takes a few years on average to improve cities from their starting points all their way to their max even if you have unlimited gold and very good generals available. the only really annoying thing about the interface here is you have to give orders each month and can't set people to continue working on a certain thing(useful if you have officers with just one good stat, or everything else in the city is maxed, etc).
visit improves manpower at the city(you get more manpower every few months which you can draft for gold), and i think it improves security so plots succeeding or prisoners escaping is less likely. market improves how much gold you get when taxes come(few times a year). farm is basically the same as market except it increases how much food you get(this happens once at month 7 iirc). defend increases defensive rating of your city(it's sort of like bit a big hit point pool, good for buying time but ultimately you need troops). the last three are pretty obvious training your trooping and buying/selling food. now would be a good time to sell food since the rate is 6 food for 1 gold and rarely gets better than this. during harvest time when you want to buy it's up around 15f/1g, and averages around 10f/1g during the year.
i was going to explain all the basics but the more i played the more i realized it'd be a a waste of time. below shows the games fatal flaw, the ai is just too dumb. you can see an army attacking an ai's last city and they are obviously losing(green bar for city is defense, blue bar for both is morale, higher is better, numbers are troops) yet their larger army at the wall fort isn't going to come help and thus save them. result is they die next week while they could have easily sent reinforcements especially since it took the attacking army a few weeks to move their across the river and it spent a week or two attacking so far. you have to have pretty dumb ai to die to an army smaller than what you have and not even attempt to fight them off.
the ai is obsessed with manning forts yet rarely seems to do anything else. you are more likely to get attacked by 10000 ai troops when you have 50000 defending than the other way around(which is how it should be). the ai's inaggression leads to unbalancing the game since the player builds up his cities much better than the ai and the way the game seems designed cities aren't really meant to get built up yet they do since the ai is too inactive. even in my middle screenshot i'm swimming in money/food yet i've only 4 cities and played about 2 years. the longer you play the worst it gets, in one game just after ~6 years i have ~100000 gold and ~600000 food which is totally ridiculous considering that much could practically support all of china yet i only had 11 cities(see the overview map screenshot below for a picture).
like previously rtk's it'd probably take the ai till 1500 ad to unite china if it ever could.  it does attack some and you'll see cities changing hands but it's practically random. the ai is very good at some tactical situations that involve timing(eg rallying or reinforcing attacking troops) yet nothing else. i hope the ps2 version is better or i'm going to skip it. the game is fun for at least a few hours though(i've played at least 10). i'd probably be a blast if you had a few friends to play hotseat(iirc 8 different rulers at a time can play at once) with but it's also a fairly slow game(sorta of like a board game).
below is teal marching a long way across multiple territories to attack a city(something which is impossible in other rtks), of course they manage to lose(mostly likely crappy generals vs good ones).  the blue flash is a unit healing(special ability) or being reinforced something the ai excels at. this is also the action phase of the game where orders are carried out(you can see the orders in the lower right hand corner.
below you can see some boats crossing the sea to attack a fortress. rtk9 has lots of different boats and siege weapons. a fortress is also under construction. forts can be built in many places inbetween provinces and in many cases block access totally(as this one practically does). the food is in red because i don't have enough to support my troops until next harvest.
below is the overview map where you can see your main competition. i'm cao cao. the white cities are unoccupied and can be taken with 1 general and a few troops but they are a long ways from being built up. one interesting thing in rtk 9 is fame which i think effects how many troops you can hold in your armies. the more famous you are the higher your imperial rank is thus effecting your rulers personal army and all his generals.
beliw is a city which is maxed out in economy, farming, and market. support still is a ways from max but a city like this is very powerful, even the less populous ones.
below you can see barbarians leveling an ai city. the ai can rarely stop them. it seems not to know you need to garrison extra troops in cities the barbarians love to attack. there are 4 barbarian cities on the map(in the minimap they are the orange city in the west corner, the light brown city in the south corner, the light green city above the purple city in the east corner, and the yellowish near the brown/grey cities in the north corner) and they are quite powerful(300k-400k troops) especially compared to your ai chinese competition(usually 20k-120k). they are also much more aggressive(generally killing ai cities over and over again throughout a game) and actually a challenge to kill due to having pretty good generals and perhaps better troops.
below is the load game screen.
Last edited by pg on 29-01-2004 at 03:07
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29-01-2004 03:01
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